How is C6/6.02 on Mac? I might switch over.

Im currently having issues with macosx snow leopard on brand new macbook pro 15 inch while c5.5.3 working like a jet. Read my “I think Im done with cubase6” topic please.

I am running Cubase 6.0.0 on a Mac. I have no issues - not that I am aware of - so far. The VST Bridge works really fine here too.

I am having absolutely no problems with 6.0.2 on 10.6.7 Snow Leopard. Absolutely love it.

I can work for weeks at very high load without a crash. It’s still got a few bugs, but I guess that’s the same for Windows. I’d say do it. I switched 2 years ago. Best studio decision I ever made!

6.02 on macosx 10.5.8 is bigtime!!

Nice one. Hope it all goes well.

See my signature. Really stable indeed.

+1

MacBookPro 2.4 intel duel
OSX S.L. 10.6.7
4gig-ram
Clean system drive (250 gig) only one fifth used
'late 08 model C.P.U
Cubase 6.0.2 CC121 & few third party plugs… Fab, Papen, Spectra Sonics & N.I. Komplete 5 etc…
Am very happy with the current build !

However, because I use Automap for few novation controllers, currently Automap doesn’t seem to be
automapping (wrapping) Cubase vsti’s :frowning:
next A.Map update hoping :wink:

Best wishes

Agreed. Cubase 6.0.2 on a Mac Pro 8-core runs amazingly well. Although, I’m coming from Logic 9 so I guess my standards are pretty low. I’d get memory errors running Logic 64-bit.

Cubase does have a performance hit on OS X compared to Windows on the same hardware. But as long as you’re using powerful enough hardware for your projects so that you’re not running close to the limit, you won’t be seeing the difference in any way.

But for example when running Cubase on my MacBook Pro I’ve opted to run it in Boot Camp in Win7 instead, so I can get the most out of the limited system resources. It does make a clear difference in that case, both in plugin and UI performance.

Both versions seem equally stable, so you won’t see a difference in that regard, unless your hardware has bad drivers for either platform. RME is one of the few companies that have excellent drivers on both Windows and OS X. In many cases it’s either or, and you would do well to research according to which system you have.

I’m interested in this as well since I’m considering going from PC to Mac Pro. However, I think it might be important to hear from people who have used both extensively rather than exclusive Mac users. That way, they can be more objective on the performance differences. If you’ve always used Mac, you probably can’t give a good comparison on that part of the issue. So, I’d like to hear from people who made the move recently or use both on a regular basis.

Considering the GearSlutz comparison, I’m starting to re-think this and possibly stay with PC on a more powerful system. For me, it’s not making sense to spend big bucks on a Mac Pro to end up using Windows through Boot Camp. Also, in the knowledgebase, Steinberg mentions that Cubase takes a perfomance hit with more than 4 cores if you go for latency below 6ms. So if that’s important (not me since I can live with over 6ms, easily), you might consider that as well.

One more thing. They just introduced a new version of the iMac, so there’s probably a new Mac Pro coming soon. I hear there’s already a prototype. If I decide to move, I’m going to wait it out.

OK, let me start by saying I’ve not used cubase 6 on OSX but I used cubase 4 and 5 for a couple of years on OSX leopard 10.5.x

At the time windows was at vista and I wondered where the future of my DAW OS was going so went to OSX from XP as I thought OSX was the way forward. I did find cubase slower in all aspects than on my XP DAW but carried on regardless as cubase 5 was supposed to address this…it didn’t.

When windows 7 x64 beta was released to all I tried it…wow the difference was amazing…when the full version was released I built a new PC and transefered all my software over to windows 7 x64 and cubase 5 x64.


Cubase ran fine under OSX but it was slow in the GUI and more importantly I’d have to double my latency, also the x64 world is quite mature now with windows as windows xp x64 came out 9 years ago. Having access to all my ram was a major factor in my decision and a year or so ago there was no choice but windows 7x64 .


let me use a car analogy as everyone seems to like them :slight_smile:

Cubase on OSX; a high end mercedes E 500,comfortable, and well equiped

Cubase on windows 7 x64 ; a Porsche Boxter S, not as comfortable or well equipped but faster and will out handle the mercedes for less than half the price.



MC

I have to say on equal hardware the UI performance is guaranteed to be worse in OS X. Not sure whether it’s due to OS X having less optimized graphics drivers in general (games that run on both Windows and OS X have consistently lower framerates than when running in Boot Camp on the same machine), or something else, but I’ve found this to be the case.

Also, more cores won’t necessarily make a huge difference on a Mac Pro. My understanding from reading the DAWBench/Cubendo benchmarks also referenced on Gearslutz is that it seems to be a pretty complex issue that’s not simply up to Steinberg, because for one the scheduler (the part of the operating system kernel concerned with dividing tasks according to the system resouces) in OS X simply doesn’t seem to be as efficient as what Windows has. There seemed to be improvement coming from 10.5 to 10.6 according to those benchmarks, so perhaps 10.7 improves it yet more.

Clearly though Cubase has had Windows as its lead development platform, so it’s not as clear-cut as OS X having some issues in itself. Logic performs great on OS X, for example. Actually Steinberg would do well to implement a similar hybrid latency system such as what Logic has, where the active track has low latency and everything else plays through a 1024 or 2048 sample buffer. That’s a pretty excellent way for giving a really high performance experience for the user, yet maximizing how many plugins you can run. Well, of course such a basic design change is pretty hard to just throw in there, so not sure how realistic that is in the near future.

I’d been an OS X user for years due to using Logic, but before that I was using Cubase on my own custom-built PCs. Having moved back to Cubase with version 5 and using it in both OS X and Windows for a while, I now opted to again build a PC and am pretty happy running C6 64-bit in Win7. However I’m sure I’d be as happy using it on a Mac Pro, but for the same performance I’d have to spend much more money.

I’m wondering if you’re thinking about this too hard. Maybe you should try Cubase on the Mac OS first before going straight to Windows. You might have already mentioned it, but I’m curious what you’re trying to run in Cubase? I’m running the first generation Mac Pro 8-Core (which is four years old now) in OS 10.6.7 with a huge orchestral template plus a lot of synths and plugins with the buffer size at 384 and I’m not having any issues at all. Mind you, I am running nearly all my samples in VE Pro, but I’d do that anyway regardless of OS and/or program or how powerful my computer is.

I think the main question here is not whether or not the Mac Pro is good enough, it whether you’ll do better on a PC for less money. After doing some research, my thought is that the best choice with Cubase 6 is a PC with Win 7 64 bit. Sure the Mac will perform, but with everything I read, the PC will out perform it as far as Cubase is concerned. Mayeb we’re really talking Win 7 vs Snow Leopard, so the Mac Pro with Win 7 could work just as well as the PC, but will cost more. I don’t know enough on the performance issue of Win 7 on a Mac vs on a PC, but I suspect the PC will do better since we’re not talking about a hybrid, so to speak. Organic vs synthetic analogy: [insert here]

As I mentioned previously, I was thinking about the Mac Pro. Maybe in the future when performance improves, but not now. If I’m going to move to a Mac at this point, I’m also going to move to Apple’s Logic 9. As for cost, custom builds from a specialty shop are going to cost much more than building it yourself…and it’s not difficult to do. There are instructions on “how to” everywhere. A friend of mine who only used computers for basic, non-creative office work and has no knowledge of computer engineering built an incredibly fast and stable system with a 7.4 Windows Experience Index rating based on advice from a website (name I don’t recall). The max WEI on Windows 7 is 7.9. It cost him about $1,200 in 2010. My store bought HP which I use to record production music for media has a rating of only 4.7 on Windows 7 and was $900 in 2008. So, if you’re not lazy (and unfortunately for me, I am) it sounds like a custom self-built PC with optimum components (those proven to perform well with Cubase 6) and Win 7 64 is the most cost effective and will get the better performance. Next best is the custom shop build, but only because it will cost more. But that’s still less than the base model of a Mac Pro. For example, ADK can give you an i7 4.5 GHz quad processor (overclocked?, hyperthreading, SandyBridge), 16 GB RAM (max), a 500 GB OS drive w/ Win Pro 7 64 (you could do Home Prem instead of Pro since 16 GB is max RAM) and a 1 TB audio drive (plus good components: Zalman fan, TI firewire, etc) for $2,200. It goes higher with better and/or additional components if you need them, like more drives, etc. You can probably self-build that for under $2K (guessing). A Mac Pro quadcore base model starts at $2,400 and has lower specs (only 3 GB’s RAM, slower processor, less storage, etc) and weaker performance for Cubase.

Now, if I could only take my own advice… 10 to 1, I’ll end up with custom built from one of the pro shops, not self-built, because I have zero patience.

I switched from PCs to all Macs recently.

I think the proper way to put it is “best for me.”

I personally thinks PCs out perform Macs atm, (this coming from a 100% mac user), but I can sacrifice the performance for what I feel is invaluable on the Mac systems (which I will not bore everyone and go into at this time).

Just think about it on your own and weight the benefits and downfalls of each system.

I really like the care analogy that Norbury made, though I think some PCs are more like KIAs or Geo Metros while any macs is at least Honda or better:P

You have to take this into account: a powerful Mac does not nessecarely make a good pc…A Mac under windows can have very bad dpc latency…so watch out…

And ADK or other audio pc is not just a pc with “good components” or “the best”. It is a pc with SELECTED components that behave well together and show VERY GOOD DPC latency values.

A Mac running windows does not pr se…

The issue is that the Boot Camp drivers are by no means Apple’s #1 priority, so it’s not guaranteed things just work out of the box. They used to have terribly misbehaving drivers still in Boot Camp 3.0 where on my MacBook Pro I’d get DPC latencies over 8ms (8000µs), which of course means no DAW will run properly. But if I recall correctly, killing the Boot Camp app helped with that. With Boot Camp 3.1 I didn’t need to do that anymore.

I don’t see any problem in Macs as audio PC hardware in itself (except the non-TI Firewire interfaces they use), but one probably shouldn’t expect “it just works” to apply to Apple’s Windows support. One may very well need to go hunting for drivers themselves, which of course is a little harder on a Mac where the whole thing is you’re not supposed to be staring at the components list… so you won’t have one easily available.

I switched over to Mac about 2 years ago after using Cubase on PC since day 1. I wish I’d have switched sooner. OK, there maybe a slight performance hit, but that’s massively overshadowed by the overall experience. Over the past 2 years Cubase has crashed only a handful of times, and on those occasions I’ve reverted back to the latest backup. On Windows, crashes were far more frequent and often resulted in corrupted project files. On Windows I would lose days to ‘configuring’ or dealing with OS issues. On Mac I just get on and work. I could go on and on, but put simply Cubase on OSX is a far more dependable and elegant system that just works. To me that’s worth the extra money.